1610. I will make your seed like the dust of the earth means multiplying beyond measure, as can be seen without explanation. This verse says that his seed would be made like the dust of the earth; other passages in the Word say "like the sand of the sea," or "like the stars of the heavens." ¹ Each has its own particular symbolism. The dust of the earth has to do with heavenly qualities, because the earth symbolizes the heavenly aspect of love, as shown earlier [§§620, 1413, 1437, 1585]. The sand of the sea has to do with spiritual qualities, because the sea symbolizes the spiritual aspect of love, as also shown. ² "Like the stars of the heavens" symbolizes both, in a higher degree. Because these items are incapable of being counted, it became customary to use them to express the idea of immeasurable reproducing and multiplying.

[2] The multiplying of the seed — the faith that comes of love, or love itself — beyond measure symbolizes the Lord in the highest sense. Specifically, it symbolizes his human quality, because the Lord's human quality is called the "seed of a woman," as discussed in §256. ³ And since the Lord's human quality is meant, multiplication beyond measure means infinite heavenliness and spirituality.

On the other hand, when seed symbolizes the faith that comes of charity (or charity itself) in the human race, the meaning is that the seed in each individual who lives a life of charity would multiply beyond measure. This actually happens in the other world to everyone who lives a life of neighborly love. Charity and the faith that results from charity, along with happiness, increase so abundantly in such people that it can be depicted only by something immeasurable and inexpressible.

When seed symbolizes the human race itself, its multiplication in the Lord's kingdom is again beyond measure and comes not only from people inside the church and their children but also from people outside the church and their children. As a result, the Lord's kingdom, or heaven, is immeasurable, as will be discussed elsewhere, the Lord in his divine mercy willing. ⁴

Footnotes:

256. Not only faith is called "the seed of a woman;" the Lord himself is so called as well. This is partly because he alone gives us faith, so that he alone is faith. It is also because he chose to be born and in fact to be born into a religion that had sunk all the way down into a hellish, diabolical kind of selfhood, through self-love and materialism. He was born in order to unite his divinely heavenlike selfhood to a human one, in the context of his human nature, by the use of his divine power, so that they could become one inside him. Had he not united them, the world would have ended in total destruction.

Because the woman's seed is the Lord, then, the text refers to it as "he," not "it."